In Nordic Accordion Sutter fulfills the covenant he made with his elders long ago—to dramatize, critique, and honor their struggles, their culture, their peculiar ways.

The book explores the experience of Scandinavian immigrants, their ancestors, and their descendants.

At the heart of the book lies a cycle of dramatic monologues by old women about their half-pagan younger years as cow herders in the mountain pasture camps of Sweden. “This,” says David Ray of Sutter’s work, “is poetic storytelling at its best.”